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Monthly Archives: January 2015

What price customer service?

Every consumer has a story about a mishandled complaint or a completely baffling customer service procedure that takes a disproportionate amount of time to resolve. It’s not surprising, really, given that each day billions of transactions take place all over the world. In the not-too-distant past when a lot more business was transacted in person, complaints were often resolved over the counter. These days, customers are as likely to take to social media as they are to confront the seller with a complaint, so how should businesses manage complaints – and are review sites a trustworthy source of information for consumers? Continue reading →

Factors, equipment finance firms and banks of all sizes have expanded their balance sheets thanks to a tidal wave of liquidity created by five years of expansionary global monetary policy. But record stimulus coordinated in an unprecedented way around the globe has only resulted in middling inflation to date. Just as many financial players lay bets that the Federal Reserve under Janet Yellen will raise short-term interest rates in 2015 for the first time since the crisis, the spectres of falling demand and falling prices rear their ugly heads. Any signals worth noting are mixed and still uncertain, but data suggests the Fed should not remove the financial sector’s monetary punch bowl just yet.

Whisky galore

For lovers of all things Scottish, the announcement that a Japanese whisky has been crowned the best in the world by an influential international publication will come as something of a shock. Scottish whisky is part of the fabric of the country; its isles and glens are peppered with almost a hundred distilleries across seven regions, each producing a distinctive style with impressive provenance.

Scottish whisky has dominated global sales in the past, with recent winners in Jim Murray’s annual ‘Whisky Bible’ including top-notch malts from Old Pulteney and Glenmorangie. But this year it looks as if Scottish producers have been caught napping with all of the top five positions going to non-Scottish brands. So what’s gone wrong?

Popularity contest

Google must feel slightly bewildered and not a little bemused by events that are unfolding in Europe at the moment. On the one hand, the company enjoys unprecedented online sway on the continent, handling around 90 per cent of all web searches performed, while on the other, it is attracting the censure of the European Parliament, whose members seem determined to dismantle Google’s virtual monopoly via the imposition of union-wide anti-trust measures.